An age-old theme courses through numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes far back to the era of silent film comedy. In the new *Superman* film, the villain is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire wielding his vast wealth to tarnish Earth's mightiest protector while manipulating world events to enrich himself. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled arena to boost his wealth. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a family of super-wealthy lynxes who stole a well-meaning mother's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their own profit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, Josh Brolin embodies a affluent bad guy controlling a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people living in desperate poverty, while using AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to label them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The Oz-based film *Wicked* doesn't highlight class division as overtly, but its evil characters live in clear extravagance while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, pushing them from their homes and into cages or slavery. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the tough residents of a struggling farm town against condescending upper classes who inhabit lavish sky-high mansions floating overhead. Remarkably, the agreeably goofy farcical update *The Naked Gun* centers on a billionaire's plan to cause worldwide catastrophe — for financial gain, naturally.
It is not especially new in a string of movies presupposing that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a concept dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his chronically destitute Little Tramp character against tycoons, bosses, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed a similar story for the era of the exploitative, damaging tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is incompatible with basic human values, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes demise of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Changes Nothing
Nevertheless, inexplicably, we never actually taking down the wealthy. Every time lawmakers respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at popular entertainment, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to allow it to permeate the public consciousness — certainly American society would not persistently idolize billionaires. And yet the headlines reveals every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately link affluence to intelligence and social worth, even after decades of the world's most beloved movies conveying the opposite.
In fact, it looks as though the never-ending cycle of anti-wealth storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that hinders substantive reform. Offered a frequent serving of mostly triumphant fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film satisfied about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, suggesting that the system works, and that plucky heroes will weed out any corrupt individuals among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies aren’t new in that respect, they do follow some recent trends among class warfare stories: They’re getting angrier, sharper, more direct, and observably more violent. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people be taught a lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were eliminated by fantastical monsters (*Death of a Unicorn*) and devoured by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a distant sphere (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face point blank on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an rising rival (*Him*).
"Very few of 2025’s ultra-rich villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so clear that affluent individuals live by a separate justice system, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "behind bars" resolution no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in notably brutal, poetic ways.
Significant Outliers
There are exceptions, certainly. The iconic villain in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* ends up confined to the virtual grid, a setup that obviously being saved for a follow-up film. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is reformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
